Chapter 9

Divine Intervention

In This Chapter

● The ins and outs of Roman religion

● How the Romans used temples and shrines

● The amazing range of gods the Romans worshipped

● How the Romans assimilated other peoples’ gods

● The impact of Christianity

● How the Romans went to meet their makers

Not only did the Romans believe in their divine mission to rule the world, but many also saw gods in everything, everywhere, and all the time. They believed that gods decided and controlled everything down to the last puff of wind and blade of grass. In the Roman world, places of worship existed in all shapes and sizes, from the huge temples in Rome and all other major cities, right down to tiny streetside shrines, household shrines, and even portable shrines. Even coins bore pictures of a whole array of gods and goddesses on their reverses.

Roman gods ranged from the great classical pantheon of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva to fantastically obscure local gods (which could mean as local as being the god of the lock on your front door). They also included exotic gods from the East and strange, wild Celtic gods from the West.

The only exception was Christianity. The Romans would happily have added Christ to their list of gods (and some did), except that the Christians were having none of it. So it’s remarkable that Christianity ended up as the state religion. That’s also important: Religion in the Roman world was a matter of personal faith and superstition, but it was also political. Observing the state cults, including emperor worship, was part of expressing loyalty to the Empire. Anyone who refused did so at his or her peril.

Cutting a Deal Roman Religion

Roman religion, like most ancient pagan religions, was basically about cutting a deal with a god (or gods). The average Roman wanted a service from a god, which could mean anything from support in winning a war or saving a crop, to bringing death and ruin on someone who had stolen his cloak (literally). In return for that service, the Roman promised the god a gift - usually a sacrifice or money - in return. This is how the deal worked:

● Stage 1: The Vow. The god was contacted and asked for a service. Depending on the god (or goddess), this could be done at a major shrine, a minor shrine, or a private shrine, often in written form on a docket which was then stored at the temple and involved specifying what was needed and what would be given in return: that’s the vow (votum). These are sometimes called ‘curse-tablets’ because they cursed the culprit and asked the god to visit violent retribution on him or her.

● Stage 2: Fulfilling the Vow. If the god performed the service (or was believed to have done so), the sacrifice or gift was made, and a record that the vow had been fulfilled was left at the shrine: usually a small altar of stone, earth, or wood, or a votive plaque made of bronze or silver pinned to a temple wall, which was inscribed with the person’s name, the god being dedicated to, and a formula like VSLM which was short for Votum Soluit Libens Merito, ‘He willingly and deservedly fulfilled the vow’.

Roman shrines ended up awash with offerings, which were buried in pits or thrown into pools. Coins were especially common, but the average Roman usually took care to throw in worn old coins of low value - well it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

Good days and bad days

A big part of religious superstition was doing things on the right day:

● The Kalends.The first day of the month was sacred to Juno.

● The Ides:The thirteenth day of short months and the fifteenth of long months were sacred to Jupiter.

● The Nones;The ninth day before the Ides.

Religious festivals were never held on any day before the Nones apart from an ancient one in July called Poplifugia (it means 'flight of the people' which might have been when everyone fled during the storm on the occasion Romulus disappeared - see Chapter 10). Similarly, religious superstition ruled when weddings could be held. The Kalends, Nones, and Ides, the first day following any of them, the whole of March, May, and the first two weeks of June were all no-nos, as were days of religious festivals.

Marriage

For most people, the marriage ceremony was a private affair starting in the bride's home with a friend presiding as auspexwho examined entrails of a sacrificial victim to foretell the future (it's where we get our word auspices, meaning a forecast, from). The husband then carried his new wife into his home. Divorce was a straightforward rejection of the partner. Roman patricians had an ultra-formal wedding ceremony called confar-reatio. The overseeing god was Jupiter Farreus, and the pontifex maximus ('chief priest') and flamen dialis('priest of the Jupiter cult') presided. Farreus means 'made of spelt (wheat)' so a spelt cake formed a central part of the rite. Divorce for them was only possible through the ceremony of diffarraetio.

The key thing was ritual. Every sacrifice, every form of worship, every communication to the god had to be done exactly to a precise form of words and sequence of events. Get it wrong and the magic wouldn’t work. Even if things seemed to go right, if the desired result didn’t follow, then the superstitious Romans simply concluded that the ritual must have gone wrong. Less superstitious Romans, and there were plenty of them, concluded either there weren’t any gods or looked around for a better one.

Divining the future

The Romans wanted to know what lay in the future. Who doesn’t? But the Romans lived in a more unpredictable world than we do. Having little or no idea about impending weather catastrophes, earthquakes, disease, or their own deaths, they convinced themselves that signs must exist which foretold the future.

Omens

The Romans were obsessed with omens, good or bad. They looked out for signs of what the gods were up to. Omens counted for a lot. During the civil war of AD 68-69, the short-lived Emperor Vitellius prepared his troops to hold Italy against the approaching army of Vespasian (see Chapter 16). Vitellius got very upset by an unexpected turn of events:

A cloud of vultures flew over and blanked out the sun.

An ox being readied for sacrifice escaped, scattering all the ritual and sacrificial equipment, and had to be chased and killed in a non-ritual way.

Or so the story, recounted by Tacitus, went. It might have been true, but Roman historians loved being wise after the event by listing all the bad omens. Appropriately, Vitellius was defeated and killed. The Romans also saw omens of Julius Caesar’s assassination (see Chapter 15). Septimius Severus concluded he was destined to be emperor, based on omens (see Chapter 18).

Being a priest was part of the official duties of men of status, which was why the emperor was also chief priest (pontifex maximus). Pliny the Younger was delighted when he was made an Omen Interpreter because (he said) it was an honour to be favoured by Trajan (AD 98-117), and also ‘because the priesthood is an old-established religious office and has a particular sanctity by being held for life’.

Soothsayers

The haruspex was one of the specialist priests who predicted the future. There were two techniques:

● Augurium: The interpretation of natural phenomena like storms or animal activity

● Extispicium: The interpretation of the entrails of sacrificial animals

Here’s an especially revolting example of soothsaying. On 15 April, special rites celebrated the sprouting seeds in the ground and the pregnancy of cows. The calves were ripped from the stomachs of their mothers, their entrails cut out for soothsaying, and the bodies burned.

Dream interpreters

Some Romans were very keen on the idea of a level of higher awareness, only reached by being profoundly intoxicated - or, basically really very, very drunk indeed. It’s a similar idea to that put about by people in more modern times who believe that using mind-bending drugs gives them incredible insights to the true meaning of life (until they wake up, that is).

The lucky phallus

If you visit Pompeii today, you'll see over many of the doors into houses a representation of an erect phallus. Phalluses were connected with fertility (through Priapus, the god of procreation), but they were also symbols of good luck and were thought to ward off evil. Placing them over a door was supposed to protect the home from any evil passing in through the entrance.

Miniature phalluses were also worn as personal lucky charms as brooches or on rings. Giant phalluses were mounted in carts and wheeled around during celebrations of Bacchus. In the city of Lavinium (modern Pratica), a month was devoted to the festivities, climaxing with the phallus being displayed in the forum where matrons decorated it with flowers.

Bad day for a soothsayer

The Romans could also see the funny side of all this fortune telling and omen-reading. The poet Martial recorded what he thought was a hilarious story about a soothsayer. A billy goat was to be sacrificed to Bacchus by a Tuscan harus-pex (soothsayer). While cutting the animal's throat, the haruspex asked a handy yokel to slice off the animal's testicles at the same time. The haruspex then concentrated on the job in hand when suddenly the yokel was shocked to see 'a huge hernia revealed, to the scandal of the rites' emerge from the goat's body - or so the yokel thought. Anxious to live up to the occasion and observe the religious requirements by removing this offensive sight, the yokel sliced off the hernia only to discover that in fact he had accidentally castrated the haruspex!

Some Roman cults grew up around this idea, with temples constructed so that the believers could drink themselves into a stupor and collapse into a drunken sleep in chambers in the temple in the presence of the god. They’d wake up the next day and recount their dreams to the resident dream interpreter who (for a fee, of course) would explain the hidden meanings. One such place was the healing shrine of a god called Mars-Nodons in Britain at a place now called Lydney. The funny thing is that the shrine was at its height when the Roman Empire was Christian, showing that some people were still keen on old pagan ideas.

Oracles

An oracle was a dedicated individual through whom a god spoke to the world. Generally oracles spoke in cryptic riddles, which needed interpreting. The most famous oracle was at Delphi in Greece, but there were many others, such as the oracle of Juno Caelestis (‘Heavenly Juno’) at Carthage, or the god of Carmel in Judaea. Vespasian consulted the Carmel oracle before he made a bid to become emperor in AD 69. He got a very encouraging message: Anything he wanted to, apparently, was guaranteed to happen.

Non-belieVers and charlatans

Not all Romans went around believing in the long-established pagan cults. Some people thought all the ritual was stuff and nonsense. Other even more cynical types spotted that fulfilling people’s beliefs about religion was an excellent way of making a fast buck.

Healing cults, hot water, and dogs

The whole Greek medical tradition (refer to Chapter 7) was based on religion and went all the way back to the god Aesculapius (Greek: Asklepios). Temples of Aesculapius are found all over the Roman world and became the centres of some of the healing cults. In an age when 'real' medicine was pretty limited in its capabilities, many people put all their faith into healing cults. Hot springs were popular centres that sucked in large numbers of ailing pilgrims. They hoped for a cure in return for gifts to the presiding god or goddess. Bourbonne-les-Bains in Gaul was a major shrine and healing spring used by the Roman army, and was dedicated to a couple of local gods called Borvo and Damona.

Religious healing was big business and, until the coming of Christianity, places like this made serious money out of catering for and accommodating people desperate to get well. The most surprising element of some healing cults was the use of dogs. Dog saliva was supposed to have special healing properties, so dogs were kept at temples and encouraged to lick wounds or the eyes of blind people (eye disease was very common in antiquity).

The sceptics

Not all Romans were convinced by all this addiction to ritual, omens, and superstition:

● Cicero wondered if it didn’t all amount to self-induced imprisonment, with people trapped by their fear of what omens might mean and terrified of getting ritual wrong.

● Pliny the Elder thought it was mostly superstitious self-serving nonsense and was fascinated by how people were convinced the goddess Fortuna was behind all their good luck and also responsible for their disasters and misfortune.

One of Pliny the Younger’s greatest contributions to history is his letter to the historian Tacitus about the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Describing the terrified crowd, he said, ‘Many sought the help of the gods, but even more imagined there were no more gods left and that the universe had been plunged into permanent darkness for all eternity.’

In the motion picture Spartacus (1960), a politician character called Gracchus about to make a sacrifice tells the young Julius Caesar what he thought of the gods, saying, ‘Privately I believe in none of them, neither do you - publicly I believe in them all.’ A Hollywood script it may be, but many real Roman politicians knew how important going through the motions of belief was, regardless of what they really thought.

Religious con-artists

With so many people prepared to visit sacred shrines in search of a service from a god, it’s no great surprise that there were plenty of other people interested in cashing in. A writer of the second century AD called Lucian wrote about a crook called Alexander of Abonueteichos in Bithynia and Pontus. This man cheated the credulous at his shrine by pretending to be insane and planting a goose egg in which he had placed a snake. Later he ‘discovered’ the egg and claimed thereby to have found the newborn Aesculapius. He also rewrote prophecies stored in the temple so he could ‘prove’ he’d been right all along. As far as Lucian was concerned, those who fell for this were mentally-deficient and indistinguishable from sheep. This sort of thing probably went on in a lot more places.

Roman Temples and Shrines

There were several different types of Roman temple, but in most cases the important thing to remember is that, unlike churches, pagan temples weren’t places for worshippers to gather. They were sacred places to store cult statues and other cult treasures, and were only open to priests. The ‘action’ took place outside in the precinct, which is where altars stood for sacrifices, soothsaying, and performing ritual.

The Latin word templum for a religious precinct is now used by us just tomean the actual sacred building: that is, the temple, which the Romans called aedes or fanum.

Temples turn up in these places:

● In town centres in the forum and often near theatres because the two were closely linked in ritual. Sometimes whole towns, like Bath in Britain, grew up around a temple.

● Anywhere else in a town, often at road junctions or as part of another complex like a baths.

● At specialised rural religious centres, like a sacred tree or a sacred spring, where something special was believed to exist.

● On villa estates, tended by the villa owner for the benefit of locals.

A single precinct could have one temple, two temples, or several temples, dedicated to the same god or lots of gods in any combination. The Altbachtal sanctuary at Trier had an incredible 70 temples of various shapes and sizes. Small shrines turn up in houses, street corners, by roads, or halfway up a mountain. In short, Roman temples were everywhere and anywhere.

Classical temples

The so-called Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome (actually of Portumnus, the god of harbours and sea trade), shown in Figure 9-1, is what most people think of as a Roman temple: a rectangular building with columns all the way round the outside, approached up a flight of steps at the front towards columns supporting a triangular pediment filled with sculpture. At the top of the steps are one or more rows of columns before reaching a door leading into the cella, which makes up the bulk of the building. The cult statue stood inside the cella. Sometimes there were only columns at the front, with dummy half-columns around the walls of the cella. A few temples were circular and had columns all the way round with a central drum-shaped cella.

Classical temples could be little street-corner buildings with just four columns at the front, they could be monumental affairs, or they could be anything in between. These temples turn up all over the Roman Empire. One of the biggest was the Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus at Baalbek in the Roman province of Syria, now in Lebanon. Despite its vast size, the Baalbek temple was only one part of a vast religious complex of temples and courts on the site.

Figure 9-1: The so-called Temple of Fortuna Virilis, dating in this form from the first century BC. Lying close to the Tiber, it was really dedicated to Portumnus, the god of harbours

Fun facts about the Baalbek Jupiter temple

● The Baalbek Jupiter temple was 49 metres (147 feet) wide and 90 metres (295 feet) long. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington is 36 metres (118 feet) wide and 57.3 metres (188 feet) long.

● Some of the blocks in the temple's podium are 400 cubic metres (14,000 cubic feet) in size each.

● These blocks each weigh nearly 1,000 tons.

● Each column was 19.6 metres (63 feet) high and weighed 152 tons. Six still stand today. The columns in the Lincoln Memorial are only 13.4 metres (44 feet) high.

Regional temples

Roman classical temples appear almost throughout the Roman Empire, but they picked up influences from the places they were built in, and in some provinces almost entirely gave way to local types of temple.

Egypt was always a special case in the Roman Empire. In Egypt - unlike anywhere else - Roman emperors were usually portrayed in local dress, in this case as pharaohs and in Egyptian-style carvings. They turn up most often in this form on Egyptian temples, which under the Romans were built according to traditional Egyptian forms with a series of open-air courts entered through a pair of flanking pylons before reaching the main temple structure. One of the best-preserved Egyptian temples is the Temple of Hathor at Dendarah, started under Augustus and Tiberius. It’s completely Egyptian, without a hint of classical Roman style in sight.

In the north-west provinces like Gaul and Britain, the Romano-Celtic temple held sway. Unlike the classical temples, these were simple square buildings with a covered corridor all the way round a central tower which formed the cella.

Basilican temples were very different. Based on the public hall design of nave and aisles, basilicas were only suitable for religions that were congregational (that is, devotees took part in the ritual inside the building). These mainly included Mithraism and Christianity.

Shrines

Shrines could take almost any form, from an outdoor bench surrounding a few altars to little covered buildings in temple form. Romans could even carry about portable shrines with a figure of the god inside.

In the movie Gladiator (2000), Maximus is seen early on praying to a portable set of figures he carries around with him on campaign.

In the early second century AD, Pliny the Younger wrote a description of a religious shrine complex that surrounded the springhead of the Clitumnus, a tributary of the Tiber. Clitumnus was supposed to turn cattle which drank from the water white:

‘At the foot of a modest hill, thickly wooded with ancient cypresses, the spring gushes out into . . . a pool as clear as glass. You can count lying on the bottom glistening pebbles and coins, which have been thrown in . . . Nearby is an ancient temple in which stands a statue of the god Clitumnus, dressed in the splendid robe of a magistrate. The oracles recorded here testify to his presence and the spirit’s powers of prophecy. Around about are several little shrines to named cults with their own gods.’

The Divine Mission: Roman Gods

Roman gods existed in a hierarchy that started at the top with the pantheon of major deities headed by Jupiter, the king of the gods. He had a family of associates, many of whom were identified with Greek equivalents and also had Etruscan origins, whose worship can turn up almost anywhere in the Roman Empire. But there were many other gods ranging from lesser classical gods like the Italian woodland deity Faunus and the spirit of a city like Bourdiga, the goddess of Burdigala (Bourdeaux), to the gods who represented the house and a family’s ancestors, or the gods who represented a hot spring, pool, or a tree. Often Romans came across the local gods when they arrived in a region and then adopted them as their own.

Time to meet the Roman gods. I’ll start with the major gods and describe more minor gods, but there were all sorts of others as well.

Public religion: Jupiter, Juno, Mars - the famous ones

The Romans saw the great gods of their classical pantheon in human form, but unlike humans, the gods were immortal and spent their time controlling the world. Jupiter was a mighty bearded old man equipped with thunderbolts. Minerva was a female warrior. Vulcan was a blacksmith. Each had a personality, particular powers, favourites, and faults - much like human beings - and some were linked by family relationships. Juno was Jupiter’s wife, Mars was Juno’s son, and Venus was Mars’s consort, for example. They co-operated some times and rowed at others. They were shown in sculptures, on reliefs, on mosaics, and in paintings in these forms, always equipped with their identifying attributes (like Minerva’s shield, or Vulcan’s hammer) so that there was no doubt about who was being shown.

It was the patronage of Rome by these gods that was thought especially significant in Rome’s destiny, but their essentially human traits of favouritism and squabbling add an edgy element of jeopardy and triumph over adversity: The Romans didn’t take divine support for granted; it had to be sought, cajoled, and earned.

Table 9-1 lists the main Roman gods.

Table 9-1		Roman Gods
Roman God	Greek Name	Description
Jupiter	Zeus	King of the gods, also known as Jove and as Jupiter Optimus Maximus ('Jupiter the Best and Greatest') and often abbreviated to IOM on inscriptions. Husband of Juno, and father of Mercury. Worshipping Jupiter was a routine part of state and military calendars.
Juno	Hera	Queen of the gods, Jupiter's wife and mother of Mars. She was closely associated with motherly virtues. Main festivals: 1 July, 13 September.
Minerva	Athena	Inherited from the Etruscan Menrva, she was a goddess of trade and crafts as well as war (Minerva Victrix, 'the Victorious'), and is usually shown wearing a helmet and carrying a spear, with a breastplate depicting the gorgon Medusa. Main festival: 19 March.
Apollo	Apollo	The Romans adopted this Greek god and kept the name. A patron of hunting and music, he was also associated with oracles (for example at Delphi) and healing, and with the sun. Main festivals: 6-13 July (with games, see Chapter 8), and 23 September.
Ceres	Demeter	Goddess of crops (hence our word 'cereal') and natural renewal. Her festival, Cerealia (12-19 April), was associated with major public games (see Chapter 8).
Diana	Artemis	Goddess of hunting and the moon. Main festival: 13 August.
Table 9-1 (continued)
Roman God Greek Name Description
Janus	(none)	The god of beginnings and doorways who rescued Saturn when he was thrown out by Jupiter. His temple was closed in times of peace, and open during war. Main festival: 17 August.
Mars	Ares	The god of war and usually shown armed. Juno's son, Mars was often associated with local gods in the north-west provinces, like hunter and warrior gods, but he was also associated with healing cults. Mars was also a god of agriculture and property boundaries. Various festivals including 1 June and 19 October.
Mercury	Hermes	Son of Jupiter and Maia (a fertility goddess). The messenger god, he also looked after trade and 'abundance'. He was extremely popular in Britain and Gaul where he was frequently associated with local gods. Main festival: 15 May.
Neptune	Poseidon	A sea god also associated with horses, so the Romans also linked him to the god of horses, Consus. Main festivals: 23 July, 1 December.
Saturn	Chronos	Father of Jupiter (Zeus). In myth Saturn ruled over a golden age and taught the Romans to farm. His name may have come from the Latin for a sower of seeds, sator. Saturn was thrown out by his son Jupiter and taken in by Janus. His temple in the Roman forum is one of the most ancient and best-preserved buildings there, but is a fourth-century AD reconstruction reusing bits of other buildings. Main festival: the winter solstice.
Venus	Aphrodite	Goddess of love, wife of Mars, and mythical ancestor of the Lulus clan (Julius Caesar was a member). One of her festivals was 23 April.
Vesta	Hestia	Roman goddess of the hearth fire, worshipped in every home and also in Rome itself (the latter protected by the Vestal Virgins who kept the fire going in the Temple of Vesta).
Vulcan	Hephaestus	God of fire and the smithy. Main festivals: 23 May, 23 August.

Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva form the Capitoline Triad. Their home temple was the Capitoline temple, the oldest temple in Rome. It was dedicated in classical form in 509 BC and restored to the same design in 76 BC. It was destroyed in AD 69 and rebuilt once more. Temples dedicated to the triad stood in the forums of most major cities of the Roman world, but these gods also had temples dedicated to them as individuals.

Household and family gods

When I say the Romans had a god for everything and everywhere, I do mean just that. If I listed them all there’d be no room for anything else in the book, so here’s just a flavour.

Geniuses, Fates, and Mother goddesses

The most common of the household and family gods was the genius, ‘guardian spirit’, originally a man’s guardian spirit (a little like the Christian concept of a guardian angel) but which became extended to the guardian spirit of almost anything. So the Genius loci was the ‘Genius of the Place’ which could be anything from a corner of a field to a street kerbside. There were also Geniuses of parade grounds, Geniuses of the legions, Geniuses of Our Lords (the emperors), Geniuses of any city you care to name, and Geniuses of trade guilds. Perhaps the strangest were the Genii Cucullati, a trio of hooded gods who have no names, recognisable facial features, or even attributes, found represented on carvings found in the north-western provinces.

Triplication was an important feature of some cults. The Parcae (Fates) were also worshipped in triple form, and so were the Matres (Mother goddesses) who were sometimes linked to the Parcae. The idea has survived into the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity.

Household gods

Every home had its resident lares, household guardian spirits. The head man of every household maintained a shrine for them (lararium) in the entrance hall (atrium). These gods were rather like Geniuses because there were also lares for road junctions and cities. Rome had lares for everyone of its 265 crossroads.

Gods for anything else

Gods could get even smaller-scale than the household gods. Believe it or not, three gods had separate protective duties over a Roman door:

● Forculus for the actual doors

● Cardea for the hinges

● Limentinus for the threshold

Other examples include Fabulinus, the god who helped children learn to speak. Fornax was a goddess who prevented grain being burned in driers. Robigus was the god who protected crops from mould. So you can just imagine how many gods the average household had, let alone the rest of the Roman world.

Emperor worship

Worshipping rulers as living gods was well-established in the ancient world. The whole Egyptian cycle, for example, saw the living pharaoh as the god Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, and the dead pharaoh as the murdered Osiris, restored to life by Isis. In the Greek East, worshipping rulers as living gods had become a political fact of life. Alexander the Great asked to be worshipped as one, claiming to be the son of Ammon (Zeus).

The Romans weren’t keen on the idea of living rulers being gods, and neither were most of the early emperors. Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) had to accept being worshipped in Eastern provinces because that was what the locals were used to. Tiberius wouldn’t put up with it at any price. Of course, some emperors (like Elagabalus; see Chapter 19) did fancy themselves as living gods, but they usually paid for it with their lives. It’s doubtful if many people seriously believed the emperor was a god, but the only ones who had a real problem with it were the Christians.

However, even Emperors like Augustus found a neat way of being associated with gods but without actually claiming to be one (until after his death). The central myth of Rome’s destiny was that Aeneas was the son of Venus (see Chapter 10 for the myth surrounding the founding of Rome), one of the pantheon of classical gods. This didn’t mean that her supposed descendants, the gens Iulus, the family of Julius Caesar, were gods. But being descended from a goddess was a thoroughly handy association and the emperors made the most of it.

This was made even more effective by making emperors into gods when they died (a process called apotheosis, ‘to make a god of’). Cults were established in their names, like the Divus Vespasianus (‘the Divine Vespasian’). What emerged for living emperors was a sort of compromise. The son of a dead emperor was thus the son of a god, and people, mainly soldiers and officials, made public displays of loyalty to the numen (‘spirit’) of the emperor and the Domus Divina (‘the Divine Imperial House’). It was a way of treating a living emperor as if he had a kind of parallel existence as a god.

Integrating Gods from Elsewhere

The Romans were extraordinarily tolerant of religions, because they believed all gods had power, and the Romans wanted the gods to work for them and not their enemies. So they adopted cults from all over the Empire and beyond, and combined them with their own gods.

Joining Roman gods to foreign gods: Conflation

One of the reasons the Romans managed to persuade so many people that being part of the Roman Empire was a good thing was because they generally didn’t try to destroy the religions of the people they came across. There were exceptions, the Jews and Christians among them, but in those situations, the problem for the Romans was mainly political, not religious.

The Romans were particularly good at creating combination-gods out of Roman ones and local ones, a process called conflation (from the Latin conflatum, ‘a mixing together’). These are some examples:

● In Germany, the Romans came across a local healing god called Lenus.

They conflated him with Mars at Trier and created the healing cult centre of Lenus-Mars.

● A Celtic god of healing called Grannus was conflated with Apollo to make Apollo-Grannus, who was worshipped in lots of places.

● The Ptolemaic pharaohs of Egypt joined the cults of Osiris and Apis and created Serapis, an underworld god who could perform miracles and heal people. The Romans liked Serapis - the Emperors Septimius Severus (193-211) and Caracalla (211-217) were very keen on him.

Provincials who brought their own gods with them when they joined the army or moved around the Empire were free to worship them as they pleased. That’s how a German auxiliary army unit of Suebians brought their wildly-named goddess Garmangabis with them to Britain.

These are only a few examples, but you get the picture. There can’t be many other times in human history when religious freedom was practised at this level.

Curiouser and curiouser: Mystery cults

Despite the vast array of gods available to the average Roman, whether he lived in Rome or in a remote part of Gaul or Syria, it seems that for many people, something was lacking. These people turned to the so-called ‘mystery’ cults which usually had secret rites, were only open to people who had qualified in some way through initiation, and which usually offered some sort of rebirth. The mystery cults usually came from the Eastern provinces and found their way round the Roman Empire thanks to the vast trading network and through soldiers posted to different destinations.

One of the most famous records of an initiation ceremony is the series of paintings on the walls of the Villa of the Mysteries outside Pompeii. The paintings concern a cult of Bacchus and involve ecstasy, flagellation, terror, and the triumph of overcoming the ordeals to join the sect, but little is known of their true significance. You can see the paintings there today.

In their own way, some of these cults challenged Roman religious tolerance. These are some of them, but you can also look at Chapter 19 and read about the Emperor Elagabalus and his sun cult.

The cult of Isis

Ancient Egypt was a source of endless fascination to the Romans, especially the gods and goddesses. Isis was closely linked to fertility and rebirth of the land through the annual flooding of the Nile, but her protection of marriage and navigation meant that her appeal became more universal. The cult of Isis reached the Roman port of Pozzuoli in Italy in 105 BC. A Temple of Isis was destroyed at Pompeii in the eruption of AD 79 and can still be seen today. By the third century AD, Isis was at the climax of her Roman popularity, often shown nursing her infant son Horus on her knee - a potent image taken over by the Christians. The furthest place Isis turned up in was London, and it’s an amazing comment on the cosmopolitan Roman world that an ancient Egyptian goddess could be worshipped so far from her spiritual home.

The cult of Cybele

The cult of Cybele (or Magna Mater, the ‘Great Mother’) came from Phrygia in Asia Minor (Turkey). The Romans linked her to Ceres and even incorporated her into the official pantheon of gods. But the weirdest part of the cult was her male followers. Cybele’s lover Atys had been unfaithful to her.

Thoroughly ashamed of himself, Atys castrated himself as a punishment. So fanatical worshippers of Cybele castrated themselves, too. Even the normally tolerant Roman state found the frenzied carryings-on, including rowdy parades to the sound of cymbals and raucous horns and arm-slashing, too much. So laws were brought in to prevent public disorder.

The cu(t of Mithras

The men-only Persian cult of Mithras was extremely popular amongst soldiers and traders, and most Mithraic temples have been found at ports or near forts. Followers, who had to go through painful initiation ceremonies, believed Mithras had been engaged in a fight to the death with a bull created at the dawn of time. Mithras killed the bull in a cave, thus releasing the blood that contained the essence of life.

Mithraic temples had no windows in order to recreate the mystery and symbolism of the original cave. The climax of the ceremony was a ritual meal. Theatrical props, like perforated altars through which lamps cast eerie pools of light and shadow across the congregation, enhanced the sense of being in a special place.

The tolerance of pain, the significance of bloodshed as a means to eternal life, and Mithraic hymns appalled the Christians, who spotted the similarity with some of their own beliefs. In fact, Christians were the ones most likely to attack Mithraic temples that, like churches, had a nave and aisles.

The Religion that Refused to Be Assimilated: Christianity

Theoretically, Christianity was just another of the mystery cults because in its early form, and as far as the Romans were concerned, it was just another strange cult from the East that promised eternal life to believers. In fact, until Christianity became the state religion, for many Romans the idea of Christ as another god to add to the list of the ones they already worshipped was a perfectly good one. The emperor Severus Alexander (222-235) kept a collection of statues of gods of all types, even the Christian God, in his apartment and worshipped them all. So it’s not surprising that some finds of early Christian worship show people apparently worshipping Christ in the old pagan way of making vows and leaving gifts (see the section ‘Cutting a Deal: Roman Religion’ at the beginning of this chapter).

But Christianity was different in key ways from the other religions that the Romans assimilated:

● It was open to anyone and everyone, any time and any place. This wasn’t a problem for the Romans, but the next point was.

● Believers had to reject all other gods. If you’ve read this chapter up to this point, you’ll realise this flew in the face of the general Roman attitude to religion.

The Roman government, therefore, got very suspicious of the Christians.

Problems with Christianity

All sorts of confused stories circulated among the Romans. When Christians consumed the bread and wine, treating them as symbolic representations of the body and blood of Christ, the word got out that they were literally practising some sort of cannibalism. Christians also made handy scapegoats for Nero (54-68) when he wanted someone to blame for the Great Fire of Rome (Chapter 16). Tacitus called Christianity a ‘pernicious superstition’ and said Christians were ‘loathed for their vices’.

The Romans were also bewildered by the most committed followers of a cult who refused even to pay lip service to state pagan cults. Pliny the Younger, while Governor of Bithynia and Pontus under Trajan (98-117), found himself having to investigate Christians who refused to deny their beliefs and also refused to make offerings to pagan gods and to a statue of Trajan. Some actually did cave in and make the pagan offerings, but the rest refused. Pliny ordered two women deacons to be tortured to find out more, as he was very worried by Christianity’s popularity. Trajan wrote to Pliny and told him not to hunt out Christians, to ignore anonymous informers, and only to punish Christians if he had to. In other words, Trajan was quite keen on the softly-softly approach.

Chi (X) and Rho (P) are the first two Greek letters of the Greek form of Christ. The two letters were placed over one another to create a symbol used by Christians on church plates, wall-paintings, and mosaics, and was also placed on coins by Christian emperors.

Persecutions

Over the next two centuries, Christianity steadily grew in popularity. Dissatisfaction with the traditional gods grew as people came to believe that all their sacrifices at temples weren’t having any effect. As the Romans grew wealthier, people looked around for something with more meaning.

You can see the same effect today, with people hunting around for something to believe in. Then there were the gradually increasing troubles on the frontiers. It didn’t look as if the Roman system could hold up. Christianity promised a new life of eternal bliss in another world after death. It looked very attractive - except that, for the Roman state, it looked like a direct challenge to imperial authority.

Major persecutions were organised by Trajan Decius (249-251), Diocletian (284-305), and Maximian (286-305), but had been going on since Nero’s time. Even Marcus Aurelius (161-180), the philosopher Emperor, authorised a persecution in 177. Persecutions took on various forms, including torture to

make people give Christianity up, executions of refuseniks, confiscation of church property, banning bishops from meeting, and burning of scriptures. The persecutions had some success because some people certainly apostatised (gave up Christianity), but part of Christian teaching was being prepared to suffer like Christ. So the persecutors actually gave some Christians a reason to show how Christian they were by suffering under the persecution. There was even an element of competition, with Christian teachers recounting with admiration how much torture and cruelty some people had withstood without apostatising.

Tolerance and turning tables

A big change came under Constantine I (307-337). Constantine not only believed that the Christian God had been behind his own success, but he also spotted the huge political advantages of using Christianity to hold the Empire together. (You can find more about all this, and the way Christianity took hold in the Empire in Chapters 20 and 21.)

Once Christianity became legal, the church worked tirelessly to get the Romans to abandon their old customs. But as part of the job involved taking over old pagan shrines and replacing them with churches, it was tough to persuade everyone. Plenty of people decided to hedge their bets. The earliest collection of Christian silver comes from Water Newton in Cambridgeshire, England. Although covered with Chi-Rho symbols, the items include plaques exactly like those pinned to temple walls by pagans.

But paganism, or anything that smacked of it, was gradually outlawed. Even mummification in Egypt was banned. Christianity took complete hold, but if you read Chapter 21 you can see how divisions in the church rocked the Roman world to its foundations from the fourth century onwards.

Christian churches in the Roman world

Unlike pagans who worshipped their gods in specific places like shrines, Christians could worship anywhere so long as they had a priest to officiate. So early Christians often used to gather in rooms in private houses, known as house churches. One of the few to leave any traces was installed in the Roman villa at Lullingstone in Kent, England in the late fourth century. A series of rooms painted with Christian symbols served for worship and can be seen in the British Museum today. Once Christianity was legalised, the basilican hall design with its nave and aisles was used, creating the church form we know today. These were already being built in Rome by the early fourth century. Constantine (307-337) built the first Basilica of St Peter's (demolished by 1612). The best-preserved original, big Roman church is Santa Maria Maggiore, built in 366.

Burning and Burying: The Roman Way of Death

Death and burial is an appropriate way to end this chapter. The Romans lived full and extraordinary lives. It’s often through the records of their lifetimes on their graves that we find out about who the Romans were and what they did. They’re poignant reminders that this whole book is about real people who lived real lives. Even if we can’t possibly make a direct link now, because the records don’t exist, many of us can surely count them amongst our remote ancestors.

Roman afterlife: The Underworld

The spirits (manes) of the dead were thought by some to live in the Underworld, though the Romans also had an idea of a kind of heavenly underworld, which they called Elysium. (It’s not very clear, and apparently the Romans weren’t much clearer themselves.) According to the myth, the Underworld was ruled over by Pluto (Greek: Hades), also known as Dis, and his wife Persephone (Greek: Proserpina). To reach the Underworld, the dead were ferried across the river Styx by Charon.

Dis comes from Dives, ‘riches’, and even Pluto comes from the Greek plouton for rich. No-one knows why the king of the Underworld was associated with riches, unless it means the underground riches of minerals and the soil.

Cemeteries and graves

Roman funerals either involved cremation or burial of the body (inhumation). Cremations tended to be earlier, but burial became more and more common. By the third century AD, it was the standard practice.

Cremation

Cremations involved burning the body on a pyre, together with personal possessions, either where the body was to be buried or in a special part of the cemetery. The ashes were packed into pottery jars, glass bottles, lead urns, wooden boxes, or even just cloth. Depending on how rich the dead person was, grave goods went in, too - usually metal, glass, or pottery vessels containing food and drink for the journey to the afterlife, and coins to pay the ferryman Charon for the trip to the Underworld.

Buriat (inhumation)

Inhumation involved burying the whole body. The poorest people were buried in shrouds or nothing at all, while the wealthiest could afford lead coffins or even extravagantly carved marble sarcophagi (large coffins; the word means ‘flesh-devouring’). Burial had become the norm by the fourth century when the Roman Empire went Christian, and didn’t usually involve grave goods because that was considered a pagan custom - but plenty of Christians had them anyway. Sometimes people tried to preserve the bodies by packing them with gypsum (calcium sulphate) to dry the body out, or in a few cases even mummifying the bodies Egyptian-style (which was still going on in Roman Egypt until it was banned in the late fourth century, even though it wasn’t done anything like as well as in Ancient Egyptian times).

Cemeteries and tombs

By law, Romans had to be buried beyond a free zone (pomerium) outside the settled area. It was simply a matter of hygiene though; as Roman towns grew they were often built over old cemeteries. Cemeteries usually clustered along the side of roads as they exited a town. The best visible examples today are at Rome, Ostia (see the section, ‘Worshipping ancestors and burial feasts’, later in this chapter), and Pompeii. On opposite sides of Roman roads at these places you can still walk down roads through the city gates and past tombs of all sorts of different shapes and sizes.

Rich people could afford elaborate architectural structures with statues or carvings of the deceased, together with detailed inscriptions that tell us the names of the people buried there, how old they were, perhaps what they did, and where they came from. Poor people were lucky to have their cremated remains stuffed into an amphora buried alongside. But all tended to bury their dead in family groups unless they belonged to a guild (collegium), which arranged for the burial of its members. It was common for freedmen to take care of their former master’s burial.

One of the most curious tombs at Rome is the marble-faced Pyramid of Gaius Cestius, built as his tomb in 12 BC by his slaves, who were freed in his will.

It’s 35 metres (114 feet) high and 79 metres (260 feet) wide, and was a copy of ancient Egyptian pyramids, which had excited his imagination when he lived there for a while. It was built originally outside Rome but was incorporated into the walls built by Aurelian (AD 270-275).

Catacombs

Catacombs were subterranean cemeteries made up of multistorey tunnels with niches, chapels, and chambers cut into the side walls for burials. They became especially popular amongst Christians at Rome. The Sant’Agnese catacombs of Rome have 800 metres (half a mile) of tunnels and 8,500 tombs alone, but Rome’s catacombs must originally have run into hundreds of miles.

Inscriptions on tombs

Roman tombstone inscriptions were usually formulaic and included a lot of abbreviations as well as the person's name. Not everyone could afford one, but those who could have left invaluable records for us to study. Here's a few of the abbreviations:

● DM - Dis Manibus: 'To the Spirits of the Departed'

● HSE - Hic situs est: 'Is buried here'

● HC - Heres curavit: 'His/her heir took care (of the burial)'

● FC - Faciendum curavit: 'Took care of making (the tomb)'

● V - Vixit: 'Lived' (usually followed by a number, reading, for example, 'lived 29 years')

There's a tombstone of a woman called Fasiria at the city of Makhtar in what is now Tunisia in North Africa. The Christian Chi-Rho symbol is clearly carved on the stone, but so also is the pagan DM for Dis Manibus('To the Spirits of the Departed'), suggesting she believed in the Christian God but wasn't prepared to risk annoying the pagan gods.

Worshipping ancestors and burial feasts

Venerating ancestors was an important part of Roman life. In the home, the family ancestors were commemorated with busts (see also Ius Imaginum in Chapter 3). But the Romans also made visits to graves to hold ceremonies in which they reinforced their connection with their ancestors.

Venerating and commemorating the dead was an essential part of Roman life. Two of the biggest monuments in Rome today are the Mausoleum of Augustus and the Mausoleum of the Antonines (built by Hadrian and now the Castel Sant’Angelo).

The Parentalia (burial feast) was held on 13-21 February. Out of respect to the dead, temples were shut, and marriages were banned. Families got together and set off for the tombs of their ancestors outside the town walls and had private feasts. The deceased were included, too: food and drink were poured down tubes to underground burials or taken into over-ground vaults to the burials there. On the last day, there was a public ceremony. The Rosalia was held on 10 May when Romans decorated tombs with roses, then in full bloom.

One of the best-preserved Roman cemeteries is close to the ruins of Ostia, the ancient port of Rome, at a place called Isola Sacra (‘sacred island’) which is incredible because now it’s only about a mile from Rome’s main Fiumcino airport. It’s a cluster of intact tombs, complete with dedicatory inscriptions to the deceased who once lived and worked at Ostia. You can go into the tombs and see the niches in the walls where the cremated remains of family members were stored. Outside, some the owners built copies of dining room couches for the feasts so that the family could lie down to eat with their ancestors, just like at home.